Month: June 2015

Superhero Status

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I bet you didn’t know I was a superhero.

I didn’t always think of myself as one. Sometimes I still don’t. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am. Then sometimes I actually have to be-LI-E-Eve it!

I’ve never leaped tall buildings in a single bound or stopped a locomotive with my bare hands. I’ve never swung high above city streets on a spider’s thread or controlled the weather with a hammer. I’ve never protected the world with a suit of iron or fought crime with martial arts skills in a black cape. But, I am still a superhero.

I am a superhero in God’s eyes. He has equipped me with a proper suit….“Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” Ephesians 6:13

He has enabled me with a proper style…“My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.” 1 Corinthians 2:4

He has empowered me with a proper strategy…“With Your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall.” Psalm 18:29

I have an enemy and he is evil, cunning and deceptive. I don’t like him. AT. ALL. I have fallen prey to his schemes many times in my life. I have believed his lies and listened to his proverbs. I have tuned my ear to his voice and turned my eyes to his direction. I have stumbled and fallen, run in fear and tried to hide. I have even wanted to give up.

This is my journey of faith…sometimes my faith has been weak, sometimes it’s been small, but I’m certain of these things…

When I am weak, God is strong. “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness”…”That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:9a-10

When I feel small, God is big. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9

When I fall down, God picks me up. “The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.” Psalm 145:14

When I listen quietly, God speaks loudly . “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding.” Job 37:5

When I look up, God looks down. “I lift up my eyes to the hills–where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1-2

My superhero status is only because I have a God who’s the greatest Superhero. EVER. Greater than the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Avengers all thrown together. And more! He has no equal. And I am His child. When He gave me His Name, He gave me His strength. Only through Him can I be so bold and courageous, so enabled and equipped. When the enemy comes against me, I have all I need in my Mighty God. He goes before me. He fights for me. He’s always on my side.

I wish I’d known all this when I was younger, but I’m so glad I know it now. And I just wanted to share it with you. Because we need more superheroes in this world. We need to be a people who rise up in belief that God is above all things. He is Jehovah-Sabaoth, The Lord of Hosts.

“David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.” 1 Samuel 17:45-46

Oh, who doesn’t love the story of David and Goliath?!? Who doesn’t need to hear these words in these days on the Kingdom Calendar?!? Who doesn’t need to be reminded that even though we may be “hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” we have a God who has this all-surpassing power just waiting to unleash through jars of clay?!?

Me! I do! I do!

When I feel powerless, God is my Strongtower. He is Lord over all powers, principalities and rulers in high places. I want Him to know that I am His warrior princess because sometimes He calls me to battle and I don’t want to let Him down.

I am a superhero.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

Though it’s waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging…

The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” Psalm 46:1-3, 7 & 11 

The God Who Accessorizes

Okay, people. Here it is. The moment you’ve all been waiting for….

Ta-da!!!!!

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I have pimped my hearing aids.

Oh, I’m sorry…maybe I shouldn’t have said it quite like that. Let me rephrase…

I have jazzed up my hearing aids. I have reached a pivotal moment in my life. I am showing them off and making them stand out by accessorizing them.

I needed some new molds recently. My old molds were giving me an absolute fit!!!! They just would not stay in my ears. Every 5 minutes I was having to push them back in…with every move of my jaw they would ease out of my ear canal like an inch worm. Now for someone who likes to talk a lot you can certainly understand how my jaw is constantly on the move. I was ready to curse my hearing aids and put them death.

My ear doctor (and if you’ve been keeping up with me on my blog you know she is my fabulously sensitive and compassionate daughter-in-law) recommended some new molds made out of a different material. I’d been looking at some pictures of hearing aids on Pinterest all dolled-up with washi tape and brightly dyed molds…some of them even had glitter mixed in the dye!

Can I just say….to-die-for-cool!!!!

Oh, yes, can I have some of these, pretty please?!?

My new molds are actually tie-dyed yellow and green and of course, absolutely, without question….they have glitter.

Oooooooooo, I’m so giddy I’m ready to pop out of my chair.

I found some really pretty complimentary washi tape at Hobby Lobby and picked out a charm and some chain in the jewelry findings section and twa-LA! (don’t know what that word is, I just made it up) I made a darling little dangle to hang from my tubes.

BUT!!!! The best part of all is that my new molds stay in my ears ALL. DAY. LONG.

Oh, Sweet Jesus, I think I hear the Hallelujah Chorus….

For anyone who wears hearing aids you’ll understand when I say this is all a very huge, very major, very bold statement for me. When I was growing up they didn’t even make hearing aids to help people with hearing loss like mine. As a teenager, I was so ashamed of being hearing impaired, partly because I was already visually impaired due to the loss of my eye, that I didn’t talk about my hearing loss at all. I didn’t talk about my eye accident. To anyone. EVER.

Now you can’t shut me up.

I was talking to someone earlier this week about hearing loss. A woman I met who also wears hearing aids. We were talking about some of the ‘issues’ we encounter in life being hearing impaired and, like me, she doesn’t consider herself disabled or impaired. When I shared with her the issues I have of being hearing impaired without the peripheral vision, though, she actually stopped talking and blurted out a not-so-nice word that I won’t repeat here. It was her of way of saying, “Well, that stinks…”

Anyway, I use every opportunity I can when I share with others just how good God is to me in all of this. I guess I’ve become so comfortable that pimping-up my hearing aids (that’s actually what it’s called on Pinterest) is just another way for me to show God off. Cause when I show off my hearing aids, I can show others how beautifully God has accessorized my life…

Yes, God is a God who accessorizes. He makes all things beautiful in His time. And He’s made some wonderfully beautiful changes in my heart and soul. Over time, in His way, He has given me

…a crown of beauty for ashes… (Isaiah 61:3)

…a garland of grace on my head and presented me with a crown of splendor…(Proverbs 4:9)

…clothed me with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (still working on that one)… Colossians 3:12

…treasures in heaven that are like fine pearls…(Matthew 13:44-46)

…the best robe, a ring on my finger, and sandals on my feet…(Luke 15:22) 

I think you get the picture.

I have so much to be thankful for as a child of the King. That’s the real reason I pimped-up my hearing aids. To give me more opportunity to tell people that.

God’s riches are so much more than just washi tape and tie-dyed hearing aid molds. So much more than hearing loss and vision loss. So much more than anything on this earth that I think is to-die-for-cool. I can jazz up my hearing aids all I want. I can change the washi tape and change the color of my molds and change the cute little dangles, but I can never change the fact that God’s way of accessorizing my life is better than anything this world could ever offer me.

So….ta-da!!! This is the real moment I’ve been waiting for….

God, can I show You off?

How I Want To Honor God

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OH Gosh.

A few Sundays ago in church we sang Amazing Love as our Call To Worship. I came completely undone when I sang the words,

“Amazing love, how can it be?

That you, my King, would die for me.

Amazing love, I know it’s true

It’s my joy to honor You.

Amazing love, how can it be?

That my King would die for me

Amazing love, I know it true

It’s my joy to honor You.

In all I do, I honor You.” (You Are My King, Amazing Love, lyrics written by Billy James Foote/Performed By The Newsboys)

I was so unglued that my friend standing beside me put a comforting arm around my shoulders while another friend behind me passed a tissue. Spontaneously, without thinking, I blurted out loud, OH Gosh! Sobs were welling up so thick in my throat they threatened to cut off my airway. I had to swallow repeatedly to keep my composure.

I don’t know, I guess I got hung up on the words “it‘s my joy to honor You, in all I do I honor You.” 

I couldn’t help but wonder…do I have joy in my heart when I honor my King? Do I honor Him in all I do? Do I have joy in all the ways I honor Jesus?

Let’s face it, we’re going to honor most what we value most in life. Sometimes that honor is misplaced or misdirected and, in all honesty, we all have hearts that are easily led astray and attitudes that quickly run wild. I didn’t even mention wayward tongues. Oops. I just did.

God grace me. Please.

Oh, how I want to honor Jesus. Not just with words and deeds, but in attitudes of my heart and actions of my flesh…in those places where I seemingly put value on worthless things, meaningless stuff, and fruitless labor. When I think of what I set my heart on sometimes I admit…I am guilty of failing the honor test.

My girlfriend and I are doing a Bible study together, No Other Gods by Kelly Minter. It’s about…you guessed it…idols, personal pharaohs, functional gods…the kind of stuff nobody wants to talk about. I won’t scare you off with the details, but I will share this from page 13:

“Most of us think of an idol as a statue of wood, stone, or metal worshiped by pagan people…In biblical terms, it is something other than God that we set our heart on (Luke 12:29; 1 Cor. 10:19), that motivates us (1 Cor. 4:5), that masters and rules us (Ps. 119:133; Eph. 5:5), or that we trust, fear, or serve (Isa. 42:17; Matt 6:24; Luke 12:4-5)….” {Ken Sande, The Peacemaker, Revised and Updated (Grand Rapids; Baker Book House, 2006), 104.}

I actually wrote in the margin…Lord, have mercy. Seriously, I’m thinking outside the box as I address this issue of “no other gods.” I really want to get to the heart of the matter. I can’t just honor God outwardly…I have to honor Him inwardly, too. That’s where a lot of us get hung up.

And this is why I got hung up on the phrase “it’s my joy to honor You, in all I do I honor You,” as I sang Amazing Love in church that Sunday. I know I have attitude issues. I know I have flesh issues. I know I have heart issues. Kelly Minter roped me in when she shared a Scripture from 2 Kings 17:33 & 41,

“They worshiped the Lord, but they also served their own gods…Even while these people were worshiping the Lord, they were serving their idols.”

See, I really want to honor God in all that I do because, after all, He gave His all for me…He gave His Son who gave His life and I just want Him to know I’m so very grateful. So–o-o-o, when I think about all of this and ponder all of that and meditate on what this means for me, my spirit really wants to honor God with as much of me as I can give Him. As Kelly says, the whole purpose of getting rid of idols is to make more room for Jesus. (If you read my last blog post, When I Am Distracted, you’ll know this is what I want.)

I’ve come to this place in my life where I want so much to honor God. And if that means I’ve got to give up more of myself and more of my wants and more of my attitudes and….and…more of the stuff in my heart that isn’t necessary, then that’s what I want to do. Some might call this a quest for personal holiness or sanctification, but I won’t scare you off with any of that, either. All I know is I need to tear down some idols. And I’m not talking about wood, stone, or metal. I might even have to grind some to powder and burn them.

But, OH Gosh! This is so-o-o-o-o hard. Yet, I have this feeling that the more of me I give up, the more of this honor I desperately want to give God will actually be the joy of my heart.

Who said this faith journey would be easy? Not God.

“So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised. For in just a very little while,

‘He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.’

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.” Hebrews 10:35-39

But, who said it would be worth it? He did.

“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.

The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever.

The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous.

They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.

By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.” Psalm 19:7-11

And that is enough for me.

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